Tofu used to say:
'When we pick up a project, we're in it for the long haul, barring any special circumstances. If you don't have patience, you should know by now not to follow our fansubs.'
While we do not think a slow release rate should keep people from following one of our projects at the same time we are saying if you will be following one of our shows, stick with us--- you're in it for a long haul as well. While the lack of motivation is not an issue with the remainder of Live-eviL, it was and is certainly an issue as far as Mr. Tofusensei is concerned. Although we have stopped waiting on him and gotten ahead with the projects we could by ourselves there are still projects like 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother which is still awaiting on his actions because he has roles currently only fillable by him.
Then there are projects like Ask Dr. Rin and The Trapp Family Story which have no relationship whatsoever with Tofusensei's disappearance and are being worked on by non-Tsubasa Chronicle staff. They are both being released slowly but since the staff is completely different will Tofu coming and doing a new season show change the release rate in anyway? I would have to say that's highly unlikely. If he has an obligation (and motivation) towards subbing S3, he'd be back solely for the sake of doing it and not bother about the other stuff or be bothered a little. He would not admit to not feel like working on it anymore. If he has no such obligation, he would not come back in the first place, barring special circumstances.
In L-E. when you're doing something old you either have to bitch around hard and get people to start working to get anything done or you need --- an aggressive initiation, commit yourself to working on all the positions that needs to be filled on the project or help the project by getting the resources it's lacking yourself. It's not easy to do either and often comes with some negative consequences as well as positive ones. To work well together at the same page is not always the easiest task.
As for the other MIAs, it has been issue but unlike Tofu's case, we were able to cover for them somehow. So we did not repeat a Tofu, did we?
Warai Otoko, you apparently have a problem with us dropping shows since dropping shows, according to you, means we made a mistake of picking them up in the first place. Yet you are suggesting us to drop our classics as well. So what are you saying? That we don't commit ourselves to subbing anything all? We respect our staff and we do not want to put the pressure of 'you are in it means you gotta stick to it till the end' on our fellow team members. Nor can anyone make such a promise. We do it not as a chore but because we enjoy any committment should not make our fansubbing experience miserable. While there are people for whom committment to a series is huge and they do not want to let fans and other staff members down. This is not the case with everybody. People have lives and even if it were the case, it does not mean they can give up everything else and put their time and efforts to meeting fansubbing committments. If we did not care about our classics, we'd drop them after few months of stalling like we've done with Tsubasa and NANA but since they're classics and our fans are dependent on our releases for finishing up the shows, we're still trying hard to finish them and never considered dropping them. Doesn't this very act show that we are indeed committed to our shows and care about our fanbase?
Bottomline is, the argument that we are dropping shows and not proceeding with other, our more classic shows, because we are making the mistake of picking new season shows is not really that valid when applied to L-E as whole. This is something that you need to bring into Tofu's attention. But the result is most likely to be that he would either not do anything at all (no fansubbing that is) or ignore it and go ahead with whatever he wants to sub. You must realise the only 'new season' popular shows that we've had to drop recently due to the Tofusensei factor are Tsubasa Chronicle and NANA. Tofu was extremely busy those days and by the time he got back, too many episodes had aired for him to continue subbing and so he lost motivation. As far are other shows are concerned, they were dropped due to a license being declared, no question or argument on that. Our other shows are still being worked on where Mr. Tofusensei does not play a big role and we're committed to finishing them and working on a new season show has only made our love of fansubbing stronger and heighten our morale, given us new energy and unite us more as a group. As a matter of fact, subbing new shows have done more good to us than bad. Subbing new shows challenges us in other ways classics do not and what we learn from these challenges do help to make us better fansubbers for our older stuff--- stuff we do not fail due to working on a newer show with demonstrated priority. Thereby, please do not try to generalise L-E in the way you do and take up individual issues to the staff who are concerned and address them with it. As a team, we try our best.
-Tsubasa